


England, a Lament in Four Parts

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, on how to cope, susan had children in narnia, they come back to england
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-03 14:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: They defeated the Long Winter a lifetime ago and now they stand in the snow again, with child hands and child feet, clad in itching clothes.or:On how to cope, a guide by the four Kings and Queens of Old





	1. To the Glistening Eastern Sea

> The sea does not like to be restrained.

There is something alien about the shower, somehow, about water readily available, about pale skin untouched by freckles, as if all the kisses that raised her are now gone, stuck between cupboard and snow. Mother takes her knives, her daggers, her hands, her pants and Lucy sits in a classroom full of hungry girls who cradle the world in their stomachs. The teacher speaks to her, her voice the only sound hanging in the room and the language on her lips sounds foreign, like this, her words clutter the air and Lucy thinks about the tree her desk once was.

She wonders about the dance it could have shown her, bare feet on forest soil, tainted red where the Lion has bled and wept. The prayer in her mouth doesn’t reach her lips, and instead, she learns to write again. (This arm isn’t hers, rotting somewhere on the battlefield, in between love and defeat, her arm is metal and rock, not bone and flesh.)

Peter kisses her knuckles, where only they can see the shadows of freckled kisses, he cups her cheeks and kisses her shoulders as Susan kneels before her bed, the girdle digging into her flesh, praying. Edmund braids her hair, too dark and too short against his skin. Lucy thinks of the dryads and the fauns, of Talking Beasts and warm spring air. Her tears stain Peter’s shirt as she buries her face in it and joins Susan’s prayer.

 _The children come back different from the country_ , mother says when Aunt Alberta visits, a cup of tea in front of her. The collar of Lucy’s good Sunday dress itches, her stockings dig into her thighs. Below the table, Edmund caresses her knuckles, draws circles on her skin. Susan smiles, her unrouged cheeks pale, her unpainted lips a faint rosé.

 _Not like yours_ , Aunt Alberta says and sips her tea. _Yours came back freezing._

Lucy’s arm aches. Susan crosses her legs.

 

 _I wish we could go home_ , Lucy says, a year later, after Caspian was crowned, after they breathed Narnian air again, after they have seen everything that has rotten away, everything that crumbled to dust. The little girl in the mirror wipes her eyes with the arm Lucy has lost long ago. _I wish I still had my freckles._

 _We love you_ , Peter says and kisses her cheek. Susan says nothing, her hair falls to her shoulders.

She doesn’t try retrieving her knife. Instead, she clasps her too-soft-too-small hands and prays, her knees on the old wood of the kneeler, her breath foggy in the old church air, the hope in her bones light and flickering.


	2. To the Great Western Wood

> _We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame._

 

England is fog clad ground and cold breath and tiny hands, is snow in September.

She coos at him, her voice like honey sticking to his teeth, her hands like water on his skin. The window is cold against his back, his hands concealed in sweater sleeves. Susan puts a blanket around him and kisses his forehead. He trembles against her, the bowl of Turkish Delight untouched on the window sill.

England is his breath painting fog into the sky and little boys pushing little girls, is his left eye whole, is depth perception and vinegar in his veins, her voice like a whisper in his bones. He holds Lucy’s hand, braids Susan’s hair and doesn’t pray.

His clothes don’t fit, always too loose or too snug against his child body. He opens the seams and does them again, Peter holds the torch above him and smiles the unsure boyish smile he lost when he killed the wolf. The cone of light is steady, warm against his skin. Edmund remembers candles and wood cracking in the fireplace. He pricks his finger, his vinegar blood stains the fabric.

Mother thinks he’s been in a fight and looks for bruises on his torso, her fingers ghosting over his ribs, his back, his spine. Edmund doesn’t flinch at her every touch and doesn’t hold the sword he doesn’t own against her throat. Instead, he digs his teeth into his lower lip until he draws blood.

The world spins around him and the Witch laughs at every one of his stumbling steps until Susan ties a band around his head, her hands cool against his skin. Lucy hugs him and her body feels heavy against his. _We love you_ , Peter says, just as the Witch’s honey sweet voice calls him a traitor. The world stops moving.

He can still feel Narnia’s sun dancing on his skin, Caspian’s kisses on his lips when they come back for a third time. Eustace is now as pale and trembling as he was when they left and Lucy hugs him tight. _Pray with me_ , she says. He doesn’t tell her about the ice still wrapped around his wrists and nods.

This England is not his home but he cannot flee it, so he sinks to his knees and bows his head.


	3. To the Radiant Southern Sun

> _The world will fall. The sun will rise and set regardless._

She ties herself in girdles and petticoats, paints her lips blood red and looks into every mirror she comes across. This is her now, this school girl walking through English snow, her hair falling barely to her shoulders. The girdles dig into her skin, the stockings stop her blood and still, she smiles. This is their home now, this cold and this hunger and she will not mourn her life beneath the sun.

Sometimes, she wakes up confused, her daughters’ names on her lips, the blanket tangled in between her legs, sometimes she looks at her feet and expects wood and metal and gems, not smooth skin and pumps. Lucy crawls into her bed, then, beds her head under her clavicle and clings to her, her copper hair crumpled and knotted. Susan sings her prayers into Lucy’s freckleless skin and doesn’t think about the stretch marks she no longer has, or about her legs.

Her classroom feels hollow, and wrong, but she straightens her back and paints her lips and smiles as the alarm sounds outside. She can feel the arrows in her knuckles, her fingers twitch. The other girls long for peace while Susan longs for home and children on her back.

Praying hurts, like her underwear digging into her flesh, like acidic lies spilling from her lips. Her prayers turn to questions and finally, to silence, when Cousin Eustace glows the way she can still remember Lucy glowing, jumping out of the cupboard the second she climbed in.

 

In 1945, the war ends and the world cheers. Susan dances until her feet hurt and her arms ache, her body flush against a faceless boy. Nobody talked to her or her friends about blood and sweat and bodies, so she took each girl aside and told her the things the dryads whispered into her skin a lifetime ago, about tea and herbs and boys. Some of them, she kisses in the darkness of an abandoned classroom, against the silence of their parents’ fears. _You needn’t be afraid_ , she says. _You aren’t dying_. Some of them, she holds close as they sob into her blouse, their skirts bloodstained and crumpled. Her oldest daughter would be twelve years old, now, would ask all the questions these girls daren’t think.

She stops believing, sometime that summer, cannot keep hoping for a lion or a faun or a dryad taking her home. Instead, she settles into this body that ties her to this world and protects every girl that comes to her, eyes puffy and red. They never call her mother, but she sings to them, sings the English songs she can remember and the nursery rhymes she can still feel weighing on her ribcage.

Her daughters are long dead and she has been handed this life in this world, so she must take it.


	4. To the Clear Northern Sky

> _The sky is the anchor of the world, it begins at your feet._

His face is smooth and young, his hands steady. Lucy puts her head on his shoulder and he braids Susan’s too short hair with unshaking hands. His body doesn’t ache and Rhindon is far away, no longer at his bedside, blade sharp and ready.

Peter can still see his hands shivering, can still hear the deep timbre of his voice even now that his hands are steady and his voice is the tenor of a young boy who doesn’t know the world, yet. His armour is as lost as his sword, his crown no longer weighing on his head.

So, he joins Lucy in prayer and kisses the shadows of the freckles she no longer has, her head bowed, his knees sore against the wooden kneeler. He warms Edmund in his fear of winter, lets out a breath of relief when Christmas morning comes and helps Susan pick out clothes.

 

Christmas morning, when the sun hasn’t yet risen and the world is still asleep, his siblings wake him, a bowl of water in Edmund’s hand, shaving cream in Susan’s and a sharpened knife between Lucy’s knuckles.

 _Close your eyes_ , they say. _We love you._ Susan paints the cream on his face and Lucy runs her knife along his skin and until he opens his eyes and sees the little boy in the mirror again. Susan kisses his cheek and they go to bed again, fall asleep tangled in each other until mother comes to wake them.

 

Staying with the professor is like taking a breath of fresh air and he straightens his back again after years of slumping shoulders. He doesn’t quite find his smile again, but the sun seems warmer, here, where he can sit in front of the cupboard for hours, his head bowed, his hands clasped.

Susan writes once a week, her letters the fluttering heart of a teenage girl but Peter can see the mother and the queen in the paper when he holds it up into the light. Her letters are straight and neat, exactly like she’s been taught, but she still signs the way she used to, the curves of her s and her n large and bell-bottomed. Peter writes back and tells her about his Latin lessons and the songs the birds sing into the sky.

Lucy and Edmund write him too, their desperation laced into their each and every letter. _I want to go home_ , Lucy writes. _Aunt Alberta won’t let Edmund in my room or me in his._ He calls Susan, then and together, they answer.

 

When they step into the train, the air is sweet and heavy on his tongue. This will be the last he sees of England, the last he sees of Susan for years to come, he thinks as he watches Susan in her high heeled shoes leave the platform, after giving each of them a kiss on the cheek, her lipstick staining their skin.

 _We love you_ , he said, his hands on her hips and she smiled.

 _May you die with a sword in your hands_ , she said, her voice so small that Lucy next to him couldn’t have heard it.


End file.
